What if your city elected a Replicant as mayor and you didn't know it? There's only way to guard against this situation, and that's by administering the Voight-Kampff test to every single candidate during the mayoral election. One newspaper in San Francisco did that back in 2003, and the results were amazing. »2/23/15 1:47pm 2/23/15 1:47pm

This season of Person of Interest has ventured deeper into the wilds of science fiction. We've seen the amoral A.I. Samaritan rigging elections, turning crime on and off like a light, and controlling an entire town. But last night's episode showed how computerized mind-control is already real. Spoilers ahead... »2/18/15 2:20pm 2/18/15 2:20pm

Here's an exclusive clip from the new episode of Person of Interest, airing tonight. Warning: if you watch this very noir-ish clip, then you'll have a really hard time waiting until tonight to see the rest of the episode. Proceed at your own risk! Spoilers below... »2/17/15 1:30pm 2/17/15 1:30pm

Here's the funniest scene from last night's Person of Interest, in which Harold Finch gets a crash course in swaying a jury from the inside. It's a very different kind of hacking than Finch is used to, and it requires him to be sort of a blowhard. But it's all part of an episode that looks at how "fixers" reshape our… »2/11/15 3:45pm 2/11/15 3:45pm

In Adam Sternbergh's Shovel Ready, we met Spademan, an assassin in a toxic New York who takes out the trash, if the price is right. In Sterbergh's dystopian future, the rich hide out in a virtual-reality paradise, the Limn, while everyone else is trapped in Hell. Here's a first look at the sequel, Near Enemy. »1/12/15 2:43pm 1/12/15 2:43pm

In Vice, Thomas Jane plays a cop who's investigating a resort where androids have gone wild. And as this exclusive clip from the movie shows, he doesn't need to ask any questions about turtles to spot a rogue android. He just asks if he can "imprint" you. The results are pretty entertaining. »1/08/15 12:19pm 1/08/15 12:19pm

Lately, Person of Interest has been serving up trenchant commentary about the ways that computers rule our lives, thanks to its story of clashing A.I.s. But tomorrow night's episode is going to go even deeper into our computer dependence — just watch this exclusive clip, where we go inside the real brains of Wall St. »1/05/15 4:12pm 1/05/15 4:12pm

Person of Interest just ended its fall season with a hell of a cliffhanger. What happens next? We won't know until January 6, when the next episode airs. But Amy Acker, who plays Root, tells us that episode was their most challenging to film. And she also tells us the big question that lies beneath the show's fourth… »12/19/14 10:55am 12/19/14 10:55am

It's no accident that Sarah Connor's famous dictum that there is "No fate but what we make" closely resembles Jean-Paul Sartre's first principle of existentialism, that "Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself." As philosophy grad student Ro Smith explains in the above video (and accompanying essay),… »12/15/14 5:30pm 12/15/14 5:30pm

Is love universal, or are there different types of love depending on the sort of people involved? Is brother-sister love different than mother-daughter love, or romantic love? Those are the sort of questions that come up in Jennifer Marie Brissett's ambitious new novel Elysium. Minor spoilers ahead... »12/15/14 4:00pm 12/15/14 4:00pm

Sarah Shahi's nervy, ruthless performance as Shaw has been one of the greatest reasons to watch Person of Interest for the past couple of years. And with tonight's episode, she's going to be in her stickiest situation yet. We talked to Shahi on the phone, and she told us about Shaw's biggest upcoming showdown. »11/11/14 10:51am 11/11/14 10:51am

Science fiction and fantasy are full of great ideas — but some works in the genre are especially mind-expanding or educational. Which science fiction or fantasy novel made you feel smarter after you read it? »10/31/14 2:22pm 10/31/14 2:22pm

This short proof-of-concept film takes aim at for-profit healthcare. A woman copes with a terminal illness while a machine keeps her alive. And whenever time is up, her lover must pump more money into the machine. »10/17/14 6:00pm 10/17/14 6:00pm

Person of Interest season three ended with one hell of a cliffhanger: the whole country plunged into an Orwellian dystopia by a ruthless artificial intelligence. Where can we possibly go from there? Check out an exclusive clip from tomorrow night's season opener which shows how dark things can get. »9/22/14 7:40am 9/22/14 7:40am

Western cyberpunk creators borrowed a lot from Japanese culture in the 1980s — but judging from this video by J-Pop diva Anri, it went both ways. Watch as our heroine puts on her mirror shades and hacks into cyberspace, only to be pursued by a dark avatar. »9/11/14 8:00pm 9/11/14 8:00pm

Even as Netflix, Yahoo and YouTube are creating original science fiction series, BitTorrent is trying a new model: crowdfunding a futuristic miniseries by asking 250,000 people to pay $9.95 each. Children of the Machine takes place in a future dystopia, where people still use BitTorrent. »7/16/14 1:20pm 7/16/14 1:20pm

In Tomorrow And Tomorrow by Thomas Sweterlitsch, a disaster reduces Pittsburgh to rubble — but you can still visit a perfect digital reconstruction of the city, from just before the disaster. And maybe solve an unsolved murder. Check out the book's first chapter below. »7/14/14 11:30am 7/14/14 11:30am